


The Whole Point of Dreams

by kira_katrine



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Characters Lose Their Powers, M/M, Post-Canon, Soulmates Sharing Dreams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-03 18:44:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20457710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kira_katrine/pseuds/kira_katrine
Summary: You're supposed to be able to talk to your soulmate in dreams. Since those are two things angels usually don't have--soulmates and dreams, that is--Aziraphale only knows this secondhand. Or at least, he used to.





	The Whole Point of Dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tablelamp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tablelamp/gifts).

Aziraphale had never fully understood the _ point _of dreams.

Angels didn’t have them. They didn’t even need to sleep, really. They _ could _ , if they got particularly bored, just like how they _ could _eat if they felt like it but nothing bad would happen if they didn’t. And most of the times when Aziraphale had gotten particularly bored in his life seemed to be when he’d been told to go somewhere particularly boring by the higher-ups and he knew they would not approve of him taking a nap then.

Not that the higher-ups wanted much of anything to do with him anymore, of course.

Some people were convinced dreams could predict the future, but that was mostly nonsense. Predicting the future was, overall, a tricky business, as Aziraphale of all people should know. And what with all the bizarre things humans tended to dream of, one would certainly hope that dreams weren’t the key to the whole thing.

Other people thought dreams held secrets of the dreamer’s past, or perhaps his present. That was a bit closer to the truth, though not in the way many of them thought. The real most important thing about dreams, though, was something that humans had figured out something was up with pretty early on. It would have been pretty hard not to, when so many people kept having dreams of the same person, night after night, and waking up wondering who they were--or, in other cases, not wondering at all. Especially when their dream conversations with that person seemed… too real. Out of place next to the constantly shifting landscapes, flying cows and scenes of nude test-taking that populated the rest of the dream world.

Some people thought, at first, that these dreams were a message of some kind from a higher power, while others believed them a cruel temptation from down below. Neither of these was correct--angels and demons _ did _both have the ability to enter the dreams of humans, given the correct dispensation from the appropriate authority, but that was not what this was. Eventually humans figured out the truth. The person one continued to encounter in one’s dreams in such a way was the person you had, in a way, been made for. The person who was the perfect match to everything you were, the one you would spend the rest of your life with. Your soulmate, as it were.

Angels didn’t have those either, and that was probably for the best, the way Aziraphale saw it. Spending his life--eternity--with any of the others of his kind was… honestly, not something that was particularly appealing to him, even if he knew better than to say so out loud. And being soulmates with a human, well, that obviously wouldn’t work. He had Crowley, and that was all he really needed, magic dream connection or no magic dream connection. So while this all might provide some insight into what the point of dreams was for a human, it was no help in understanding what it would be for someone like Aziraphale.

But he might need to start understanding soon, because the night before… he’d _ had _one.

* * *

He hadn’t known where he was at first. He hadn’t thought anything of it, though, which looking back on it was a bit strange. He had visited dreams before, true, but that was always on purpose, and he’d known what to expect. Then, he'd realized he was standing in the middle of London, though he was pretty sure it was 1980s London, though not entirely sure because he _ thought _he’d seen Shakespeare running by. It could have just been someone else dressed like him--but that still didn’t explain why one moment Aziraphale had been about to walk into his bookshop and the next he’d been standing under a very large tree in the middle of a park.

And then Crowley had showed up. Just popped right in out of thin air. And as soon as he had, Aziraphale knew this was why he'd ended up there.

“Ah! Aziraphale! You’re here! You can see me, right?”

“Yes, of course I can see you,” Aziraphale said. "I was looking for you." He hadn't known he was looking for Crowley before he said it, but it seemed true when he did. He _had _been.

“Huh. I actually managed to get into your dream.”

“My _ what? _ ” This was the first time in Aziraphale’s life that he had experienced being in a dream without knowing what he was getting himself into, and while Crowley saying that explained a lot, it really just raised even more questions. Such as, if it _ was _ a dream, was he talking to a dream Crowley or somehow a real Crowley? Why would he believe anything a dream Crowley told him? Should he believe whatever the _ real _ Crowley told him? (The answer to that one, after thousands of years, was almost certainly ‘yes.’) And it had to be a dream, because if it wasn’t there was no reason for Crowley to tell him that it was. But if it was a dream, then why was he, an angel, having one? But these were too many questions to just ask Crowley outright, even assuming that the real or dream Crowley knew the answers, so he just said “My _ what? _”

And then Aziraphale woke up. Which was extremely inconvenient, but not entirely unexpected. He had been sleeping more lately than he had in the past, he’d noticed, but still not nearly as much as humans, after all.

But that _ did _prove that it really was a dream. 

He decided the only way to figure out what was going on was to go talk to the definitely-real Crowley.

* * *

The definitely-real Crowley was sitting on a bench under a very large tree in the middle of a park. The same one from Aziraphale’s dream, he was pretty sure, though it was somewhat darker out than it had been there, with the street lamps casting a glow over the scene.

“Hello there, Crowley,” he said, walking over and sitting down next to him. “Fancy seeing you here, hm?”

“Hello, Aziraphale.”

“So… how have things been?” he said, not really sure how to approach the issue at hand.

“They’ve been… well. Haven’t had any new assignments from the boss, have you?”

“No… It’s not just me, then.”

“No.” Crowley frowned slightly. “Things seem to be changing all around… I haven’t been able to change my face as easily as I used to. It’s a bit upsetting, really. Not that this face isn’t nice, but who wants to look the same all the time? That sounds _ dreadfully _dull!”

“You think we’ll… what, get stuck this way?”

“I’m not sure,” Crowley said. “I had a bit of a theory about some of it, though. Tested it out last night.”

“And?”

“Well, you know, don’t you?”

“Do I?”

“Of course you do. You were there!”

“Was I--” And then Aziraphale realized what Crowley meant. “But--how did you know--and you couldn’t have had--we can’t do it to _ each other _!” Although it wasn’t as if they would have ever actually had the opportunity to try it before.

“I think now we might only be able to do it to each other.”

“What? Why?”

“Well, what with the sleeping and the face and all that, it seems a bit like we’re becoming more… human. Going native, as it were. Since heaven and hell are properly cheesed off at us and that’s what’s left.”

“Is that even possible?”

“Never heard of it happening before, but no one thought any of this would happen, did they? There was supposed to be a war. Warlock was supposed to be the Antichrist. The hellhound was supposed to be big. Anyway, humans can all go into dreams too, but only for one person. And everyone else on Earth’s already got theirs, haven’t they? You suddenly get two new full-grown humans, of course they’d end up as a pair with each other. Only thing that makes sense, really.”

Aziraphale knew something was… very wrong with that assessment. Though perhaps not as completely wrong as one might think upon first hearing it.

“That’s not how that works at all,” said Aziraphale. “You don’t just… become soulmates because there’s no one else.”

“Well, what do you think it is, then?”

“We always were.” He hadn’t even considered the possibility before coming to talk to Crowley, but now he _ knew _ . “You really needed a dream to tell you _ that _?”

Crowley stood there staring at Aziraphale with--was that a look of hope in his eyes? 

“...Oh,” Crowley finally said. “Well.”

“Well?”

“You know,” he said, a smile slowly spreading across his face, “I think I like that version better. Much better.” 

"You... you do?" Crowley was really... quite captivating when he smiled like that. Even though, in Aziraphale's experience, that look never ended well--it often meant something rather evil was afoot. But that didn't seem to be the case right then.

"Well, yes," Crowley said. "I didn't think it was possible, really, because demons usually don't--and angels either, but I've always felt that if there was going to be someone, if there was one being in the whole history of the universe that I was meant for, it would be you."

"...Oh," said Aziraphale, a bit flustered. "I--I certainly know what you mean, Crowley." That was how he felt about Crowley, too, and--"And not only as a friend, though you have truly been a wonderful friend all these centuries, but in the more _traditional _sense, in which people tend to think of those who share their dreams, those who--"

Crowley leaned forward and kissed Aziraphale on the mouth, saying all that needed to be said. Aziraphale kissed him back, hands running up Crowley's arms and pulling him even closer. Thousands of years of history and rivalry and friendship and silly arguments and not-so-silly ones and _stopping the end of the world _and, yes, _love--_that couldn't just happen by chance, there was no way, how could he have ever thought they could be anything less--

Of course, before he hadn't been sure that Crowley felt the same way back. But that was obvious now.

He broke away from the kiss, looking into Crowley's eyes. He didn't know exactly what this all meant, having dreams, _sleeping, _just how they were going to end up if Crowley really was right about what was happening. He did know, though, that it would be another adventure the two of them would have together, side by side.

Maybe the whole point of dreams was to tell you things you really already knew but didn't know you knew or how to put them into words until they took form before your eyes inside your head. Maybe sometimes, you really did need a thing like that.


End file.
